Two Citizens and 19 Attorneys General Sue Betsy DeVos for Enabling For-Profit-College Freedom to Exploit

Arguably the most controversial US secretary of education in the history of the office is being sued by two citizens and 19 attorneys general.

On July 06, 2017, two lawsuits were filed against the US Department of Education (USDOE) and its secretary, Betsy DeVos, challenging DeVos’ rescission regarding the Borrower Defense Rule aimed at protecting postsecondary students from abuses of deceptive, predatory postsecondary institutions.

Both lawsuits were filed with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and both petition the Court for declaratory and injunctive relief.

In this post, for the sake of space, I focus on the latter lawsuit, the one involving the numerous attorneys general (and which I will refer to as the “AG lawsuit”). However, both suits are available for any who wish to read them.

The following text is from the introduction of the AG lawsuit:

This lawsuit challenges the Department’s summary and unlawful rescission of a final agency regulation known as the “Borrower Defense Rule” (the “Rule”) that was designed to hold abusive postsecondary institutions accountable for their misconduct and to relieve their students from federal loan indebtedness incurred as a result of that misconduct.

The Department duly promulgated the Rule on November 1, 2016, after anextensive negotiated rulemaking process in which the Department reviewed over 10,000 comments, including those of students, postsecondary institutions, state government actors, and consumer advocates. The Department, moreover, allowed affected schools more than half a year to prepare for implementation of the Rule, making it effective on July 1, 2017.